


Close From the Stem

by Companionable



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-05
Updated: 2014-11-05
Packaged: 2018-02-24 04:32:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2568299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Companionable/pseuds/Companionable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The arrival of a certain Garbage Court in the city pushes Lalna to go see his local hedgewitches on Nano's behalf.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Close From the Stem

**Author's Note:**

> based, predictably, on [lucy's urban fantasy au](http://donotchoosesidesyet.tumblr.com/tagged/urban+magic+yogs) because that's a universe i can get behind. character concepts are entirely lifted from the fandom's collective hive mind, i'm not that creative. title from purity ring's cartographist, which is my personal urban fantasy au theme tune.

“Nano!” Lalna calls out the window, towards the branches that reach out to gently caress the side of his building. The tree is tall, far taller than the building, reaching out to hang over the sidewalks and the pavement of the road, its leaves beginning to crisp up and shudder in the wind. “Nano, supper’s up!”  
  
“Coming! Just a moment!” she responds, and, satisfied with her commitment, he ducks his head back inside. The brownies skitter around his feet at her imminent approach, tidying up dust and debris before moving to wait by her chair at the table. He tries not to feel ignored by them, knowing they prefer her for very understandable reasons. He sets plates out on the table, arranges cutlery and drinks, when he hears her bare feet pad along the hardwood floors from the window. “What’s on?”  
  
He turns from switching the stove off, catches her rubbing at her stump. He gestures grandly at the table. “A Lalna specialty: beef ravioli in spinach and parmesan marinara. You’re welcome.”  
  
She quirks an eyebrow with a fond smile. “Uh-huh, and _exactly_ how much of it is processed and prepackaged?” she accuses as she takes a seat, leaning down to stroke the heads of the brownies with an extended finger. They coo happily at her before skittering off to wait in the kitchen for gifts of honey and cream when she’s finished.  
  
“Less than usual!” Lalna mutters in indignant self-defense, sitting across from her and pointing towards her plate. “See, look, I chopped up organic mushrooms to put in there, and I even diced some tomatoes without messing it up too badly.”  
  
Nano gasps dramatically. “Oh, Lalna, you’re a real boy!” she cries, dissolving into giggles when he pouts hugely at her.  
  
They both dig in, though Lalna pauses when he sees her rubbing her stump again. “Is it causing you much trouble?” he says quietly, gesturing with a ravioli.  
  
Running her fingers over where her right arm ends in gnarled flesh, much like the broken branch on her oak in the front yard, Nano only shrugs. “Wind’s been stronger lately, and I think I’ve felt a low-pressure system moving in. I’ve been meaning to see Lomadia about a spice bag to hang in the tree, but I’m terrified to leave the poor old girl alone with the Hat Circle in town.” Her face screws up in righteous anger, raising a finger to point at him forcefully. “They’d chop her up worse than you did!” The brownies in the kitchen make tittering noises of concern at her obvious upset.  
  
Lalna, stuffing his face to choke the guilt, finishes up his dinner and carries his dishes into the kitchen. “I’ll go out and get them for you. Lom’s just down the street, and I’ve been meaning to pick up a few talismans from Nilesy anyway.”  
  
“Would you?” Nano asks with a wide smile, her demeanor immediately warm again. “Oh, Lalna, I’d really appreciate it. If the Sirs weren’t being a rowdy mess lately about Xephos’ nutty nephew, I’d go myself, but I’d just never forgive myself if they came and--God, I don’t know, stripped my poor oak of all her bark, or ripped her leaves all off.” She frowns. “And you know they would, given the chance. They leave crisp packages and cigarette butts all over as it is, they’re horrid.”  
  
“Wait, what?” he asks, stalling in front of the door with his coat half on. “Xephos’ nephew?”  
  
Nano nods, moving her dinner into the kitchen so she can pull the honey from the pantry and the creamer from the fridge while still eating. “Yeah,” she says around a mouthful, pulling out glittering and shiny silver saucers from a cupboard, “Will Strife. I saw him about while I was checking in with Kirin. Introduced himself all formally and everything, despite looking like he’d just been run over by the D Train.” She swipes a finger through some sauce in her bowl and sticks it in her mouth to suck on as she smiles down at all the little sprites. “He’s a bit... weird,” she mutters, after mulling over her choice of words a moment. “He flinched badly when I pulled out my phone to text Lomadia, it was strange.”  
  
Finally wrapped up in his jacket properly, Lalna just frowns. The other Lalna would have already known this, probably met Will first thing. He would have been introduced at the same time as Honeydew, with the same amount of fondness.  
  
He shakes his head, tossing a scarf haphazardly around his neck. “Well, I’ll be sure to look out for him, if he’s giving you the heebie-jeebies.” He grins and steps back toward the kitchen to press his lips quickly to the crown of her head, careful about the excited house goblins around his feet. “I’ll be back with herbs in a bit.”  
“Look out for Hats in the streets! Be careful of conspicuously placed cigarette butts or flattened pop cans! And don’t go anywhere near Sjin-- _anywhere_!” she calls after him, and he just tosses a grin and an easy wave over his shoulder as he closes the door.  
  
Bundling up against the cold, he wonders how Nano keeps warm in the towering, expansive oak tree, its branches reaching up like fingers to scratch at the clouds rolling in behind the skyscrapers, the wind howling through it like an animal as its expelled from the corridors the buildings create. He stares at the tree up and down for a moment, not at all for the first time, then shrugs and burrows deeper into the scarf, making for Lomadia and Nilesy’s building.  
  
He knocks on the door carefully when he arrives, and shoves his hands deep into his pockets while he waits. He hears thumping steps get louder before locks and latches come undone and Lomadia creaks the door open slightly, taking in his sheepish wave and hauling the door wider. “Lalna! Come in, come in. You’ll let the warmth out and Nilesy’ll be cross; he’s already put off by some bother he’s working on down there.” She ushers him in and checks the threshold behind him with a careful eye, shutting the door firmly with a full-body shove, locks and latches it once more. “Alright, so whose are you, then?” she inquires, resting her hands on her hips.  
  
Lalna sighs. “I’m not bloody anyone’s, I’m just as legitimate as any other goddamn Lalna in this city,” he grouses. He looks up to see her--still fairly confused--expression, and deflates entirely. “I’m Nano’s, for God’s sake. Whose else would I be, coming to you in the middle of the day?”  
  
The tall, blonde woman raises an eyebrow at him, striding past him briskly into the kitchen to turn the kettle on. “Oh, tetchy today, aren’t we? Something happen with Nano? I heard the Sirs had been seen ‘round; they haven’t done anything to her oak, have they?”  
  
“No, just...” he sighs again and scratches at the base of his ponytail. “She mentioned about Xephos’ nephew being in the city and I got to thinking about the other Lalna. And she brought up the branch thing again, which is... difficult. On a good day.” He grimaces, but softens when he hears a mewl and feels a cat wind its way around his ankle.  
  
Lomadia grunts at him. “Huh, I can’t imagine why _that’s_ a touchy subject.” She reaches into a cupboard and pulls out a couple of mugs to gesture at him with, an invitation to join her and Nilesy in tea that he declines with a shake of his head. “Well,” she says with force, pouring out hot water into mugs, “you didn’t come for the company. What can I do for you?”  
  
He rests against the wall with crossed arms. “I’m personally here for some of Nilesy’s tat talismans, I need a new one for the shop. But Nano’s arm is acting up with the weather rolling in, and she wanted a spice bag to hang in the oak.”  
  
“Oh, a pain salvo? She doesn’t want an ointment or anything?” Lomadia hums as she carries the mugs towards the living room with all the plants in it, having Lalna carry the sugar and milk with only a nod of her head. “I can make her something nice to put on the open bark, should protect it from the elements, though it might take longer--Nilesy!” she calls towards the stairs, “Lalna’s here! Bring up your talismans for him and have some tea!”  
  
Setting the tea items down, Lalna rubs at the hair on his chin. “Hmm, I don’t know. She asked for a spice bag, because I think those are better in the long term and work on a larger area. Maybe just the spice bag for today, since that’s easier, and we’ll pop by for a proper visit when you’ve got the ointment done?”  
  
Nilesy’s door creaks open as Lomadia nods and stirs a spoonful of sugar into her tea. “A splendid idea, I think. Though I do have to ask about return of favour? For honest purposes only, of course.”  
  
Lalna chuckles. “Not to worry, there’s at least a handful of jars of tongue of dog and bat hearts and newt’s eyes at the shop for you, Nano made sure.”  
  
Reaching across the table to set down his basket of talismans and grab his tea, Nilesy smiles and gives a small wave to Lalna. “Hullo! Nice to see you again after looking so harried the other day,” he says kindly, not seeing the look of confusion cross Lalna’s face. Lomadia kicks him as she stands to go put the spice bag together, and he nearly spills his tea with a shout. “What on earth, Lomad--Oh!” he interrupts himself, flinching, “I mean, uh, oh dear. When was the last time we saw you? You came in with Nano after she found the butts, right?”  
  
“And came screaming in about Hat Circles and terrible filth fae, and all that rot,” Lomadia mutters into her mug with a fond smile, as she putters around with her dried herbs and plants.  
  
If Lalna were a pettier man, he’d hold it against Nilesy for mistaking him. Maybe if he were a man at all, he would. As it is he just nods his head politely. “Yeah, that was me. I popped in a few days ago about a talisman of minor healing though. For the shop? The current one is waning, and I don’t know enough about upkeep to rejuvenate it, so I thought I’d just come get a new one.”  
  
“Oh, yes!” Nilesy offers, digging through the array of miscellaneous debris that make up his surprisingly effective talismans. “I do remember that, I think I’ve got it here... Aha!” he shouts with triumph, a cat leaping onto the back of the couch to peer over his shoulder at it. He holds it out to Lalna, saying, “For all the critters in there, eh? To make the infusion process less risky?”  
  
The talisman is tiny in his hands, hardly seeming enough to keep small animals from keeling over from the transposition ritual, but the weight of the charms on it sinks into the skin of his palm. It tingles through his fingers, making the magic at his core thrum in response. “Yep, just to keep them breathing while we work on extracting the needed materials. Nano’s so good at it that she doesn’t need one, but I’ve not got quite the same affinity for it.” It hurts to admit, and he covers the way his face falls by standing. He glances at the hedgewitch in the corner tying the drawstrings of a rune inscribed bag together. “All done over there?”  
  
Lomadia smiles over her shoulder at him, and turns to present him with three tiny pouches fragrant enough that he can smell them before he’s even holding them. “I did up three for you. I had some extras left over after paying for the additional seeds Kirin tried to offer me last time I was anywhere near that bloody greenhouse, and I’m eager to get them off my hands. Consider it a service.” She drops them in a small paper bag with the talisman, and thrusts the whole thing at him.  
  
Lalna glances at it warily. “Thanks...?”  
  
She waves a hand at him. “Oh, don’t worry about it. I know how to deal with him by now, there’s no danger, I just don’t like hanging onto them longer than I’m meant to.”  
  
Nilesy swallows a gulp of tea. “I don’t see what’s so bad about him, Lom. He seems a good fellow, and his incense is--”  
  
“Don’t you _dare_ utter those words under this roof again, Nilesy,” she says sharply, thrusting a threatening finger at him. “I’ll make you wash your mouth out, you know I will.”  
  
The symbologist looks to Lalna for sympathy he won’t find. “She will,” he confirms with a harrowed voice, clutching comically tightly to his mug of tea, and Lomadia thwacks him over the head for it.  
  
Laughing at their ease, Lalna makes for the door. “Well, cheers for this, you guys. We’ll be by once Nano feels comfortable away from the oak again, alright?”  
  
“Alright!” they both call, and Lomadia sees him too the door, unlocking and unlatching it for him.  
  
He hears them done back up behind him, and steps off the stoop to head back for his building. Nano would be long done with her offerings to the brownies by now, and they might be able to fit in a film before they both headed to bed before work the next morning.  
  
He stops just short of his front yard to take in a lone cigarette butt nestled in the blades of grass. He bends to pick it up carefully with his sleeve pulled over his fingers and tosses it into the road. “Nice try!” he calls into the night, glancing around the stretch of the streets around him for figures vanishing into alleyways. Unsurprisingly, he sees nothing. “Look, I’m not afraid to get all protection spell-y up in here if you try anything, you gits!” Still nothing, the cool night air undisturbed by any garbage court delegates, save for a lone grocery bag rolling like a tumbleweed in the wind. He frowns hugely, then shouts, “Don’t touch our oak!” before turning on his heel and heading into his building.  
  
“Welcome back,” Nano says idly from the couch in the living room when the door opens, already flipping through shows on Netflix. “You get everything?” she asks with a glance up at him. “Any eyes on trashlords?”  
  
He peels off his coat and hangs it up with his scarf, folding himself up on the couch around her, drawing her against him and taking in a huge breath of her floral scent. He sighs. “Yep. Not a trouble at all.” He debates telling her about the butt in the front yard for a moment, but settles for kissing her forehead instead.  
  
She hums and snuggles back against him. “Good,” she says firmly. “Now, are you willing to play second fiddle to eye-candy in Star Trek, or in the Avengers?”  
  
“Dryad’s choice,” he says simply.


End file.
